Tales from the Secret World
by Animagess
Summary: Random short stories from the upcoming MMO, The Secret World.
1. The Alchemist

**THE ALCHEMIST**

I had drank the serum hours ago and was now sitting on the porch, shotgun across my knees. Grendel kept me company while I waited for my killer to show. He arrived just before sundown, which was fine by me. I could go to bed and let the crows pick his corpse clean before I hauled it down to the river come dawn. I've always been more of a morning kind of guy.

He sauntered up the steps, pistol dangling carelessly from one hand. He was younger than I'd been expecting, but then, none of us look as old as we should any more.

"For a traitor, you sure ain't too smart," he greeted me, once he'd reached my level. "I once shot both kneecaps off a thief, had the sense to run farther than you."

"That's no way to talk to my dog," I said, patting Grendel with one hand while keeping the other on the trigger for show. "He might piss on the rug every so often, but a traitor? That's a little harsh."

Grendel growled softly at my assassin, who in response whipped out an arm and nailed him in the forehead with a throwing knife. My dog dropped to the floorboards and breathed no more. I didn't move from my seat, though my left hand was still locked in the motion of rubbing Grendel behind his soft, floppy ears.

"You're lucky you didn't catch my hand with that little stunt," I said softly. "How would I ever play the piano again?"

"I'm told the only thing you ever played were your friends against each other," he replied, apparently unfazed that he hadn't fazed me with his fancy ninja crap. "It just so happens the powers-that-be caught on to your little game, and they sent me to take you out before you fuck up any more of our plans. "

"Well, it's nice to see the Eye in the Sky finally getting organized," I sneered. "You know, your attitude reminds me of why I decided to get out in the first place. Bunch of limp dicks with your 'secret society' bullshit, thinking you can rule the world from your dinky tree-house club with paper cup phones and a stupid handshake. And then you think coming up here and killing my dog, whom I love more than my own grandkids, is supposed to impress me? Stop tracking mud on my porch and go away."

His nostrils flared. "At least I'm not a religious hypocrite or a... Whatever the lizards are supposed to be. At least I know my place. What are you? A washed-up former warlord who ruined his own career, not just by selling Illuminati secrets to the enemy, but also because you utterly failed to keep your activities under wraps."

"Sounds like someone did their homework. What do you want from me, a gold star?"

He shook his head. "I mean, I don't know the whole story, but it almost sounds like you weren't even _trying_ not to get caught."

When it was obvious I wasn't going to say anything, he asked almost pleadingly: "Can you at least tell me why?"

I could feel his curiosity overtaking his sense of duty. Maybe he really was as green as I'd thought. I was suddenly tired and wanted it to end fast though, so I told him the truth.

"I was bored."

"...What?"

"You heard me. Sneaking around, wheeling and arms dealing, it's not really my thing. I'm more of an alchemist, see. Put a pot on the stove, mix up some chem, watch the pretty colours. Slow, exacting work, but relaxing. Suits my nature. All this demon-slaying and gun-running for Big Blue just tires lone wolves like me out. I don't play nice with others, and I hate working for morons, so I decided to go out with a bang."

"You'll get your wish soon enough, gramps."

He actually said this. God, he really _was_ a kid.

He said, "There's a war going on out there, and we're going to win. You can't just ignore it, especially when you've betrayed us like this. You of all people should know we can't let this slide."

"I just want to be left alone, where I don't have to choose between one of three equally retarded solutions to the planet's monster problem," I said, still being completely honest. "I got my lab, my gun and my dog- well, two ain't bad- and that's enough to get this ancient mariner through the apocalypse." I took my hands off my weapon and put them behind my head, gave him my best grad photo smile.

"Okay, Scheherazade, enough stalling," he said, as if he hadn't just asked me to justify my life story. He'd also finally got around to aiming his gun in my direction, like he'd suddenly remembered what he'd come here to do. "Any last words?" he added, when he'd realized I hadn't any left in stock.

I flipped him the bird. He shot me in the chest, point blank. Or he would have, if Grendel hadn't woken up and dove for the gun just before it went off, sending both dog and killer toppling backwards down the steps and onto the gravel path. The throwing knife was still embedded in Grendel's forehead, and I made a mental note to remove it before it got infected. It did look kind of funny, though, and I would have laughed if there wasn't business to attend to.

My would-be killer was struggling to get hold of another of his knives, having lost the pistol, when I rammed the barrel of my shotgun in his mouth and made a crimson feast for the birds and ants right there in my driveway. His legs kicked out twice, then fell still. I couldn't help noticing how nice his boots were, probably very expensive, but as they weren't my size they'd just have to go in the drink with the rest of him. It was a waste, but oh well.

Grendel went to lap at the stuff spilling out, but I shooed him away with my foot. The knife had fallen out by itself, and Grendel's wound was already sealing over. He didn't seem to notice. There didn't seem to be any adverse side effects going on, which was a relief. Secretly, I'd been worried that the formula I'd cooked up yesterday had been too rushed to be effective, but Grendel was proof that the serum would become active in about half the amount of time I'd predicted. I wondered what the effect would have been if the assassin's shot had reached me, since I'd taken a larger dosage to account for body weight, but I guess I wouldn't find out until they sent another one to finish what this guy had started. It was only a matter of time, knowing my former bosses. Like I said, the Illuminati are dumb as the bricks in their pyramid, but they are persistent bastards. Like me. Though I hate to admit, it's probably why I joined them in the first place.

It was getting late. I yawned and Grendel followed me back into the house, leaving the mess behind. Let the crows take care of it. It was someone else's problem, now.


	2. The Vortigern

**THE VORTIGERN**

It had been the perfect date night, until the Vortigern showed up. It was the colour of a garbage truck destined for scrap metal. Its mane bristled with semi-transparent filaments, bloodshot eyes rolling bulbously in places Nature had never intended. The creature interrupted them just as Jake was calculating the shortest route between his hand and Andrea's ample chest, hidden beneath a thick sweater. He wouldn't have even noticed the threat, so great was his concentration, until the girl screamed.

The Vortigern howled back and clawed at them through the bleachers under which the two teens had been preoccupied. Jake scrambled to his feet and groped for his weapon. It wasn't there, but he did manage to drop his house key in the process.

"Godammit!" he swore, regretting it instantly even though his grandfather could not possibly be within hearing range. Still, even in the adrenaline of battle, he could almost feel the sting of his grandfather's palm against the back of his head, chastising him for this mildest of transgressions. Even so, if Jake didn't find Ddraenwyn soon, the ensuing pain would be a million times worse.

Finally, he spotted it. It was sticking halfway out from under Andrea's leg where she had fainted, landing on top of it as it lay in the grass. He pushed her leaden body aside and retrieved the dagger, which began to pulse gently with a soft blue light at his touch.

"Kind of a useless feature now, isn't it?" Jake muttered. He could feel the hot blast of the Vortigern's breath on the back of his neck, and though his every instinct was against it, he turned and faced the horrific smell. The stench was overpowering; his eyes watered and the Vortigern became a vaguely thrashing blur. He held Ddraenwyn before him and it seemed as if a clean, fresh breeze was washing over his skin. His vision cleared along with his senses, just in time to see the Vortigern rip away the final remnants of the metal stand and rear over him, black mouth agape.

"Ho-lee shi-"

Jake dodged to the right, leading it further from Andrea as the Vortigern's tri-needled paw turned the field into a dirt cornrow. He ran the 100 metre dash down the part of the turf that was still intact, though he'd always been more inclined towards football than track and field. Ddraenwyn's light pulsed impatiently in his fear-clenched fist as these nonsense thoughts fluttered through his brain. He was terrified, although part of him was more than a little upset that his chances of scoring with Andrea had been supernaturally thwarted. He could feel his bottled-up hormones itching for release into some kind of outlet, any outlet, and now the Vortigern seemed like the perfect target for was rapidly becoming an insatiable urge for violence. Ddraenwyn's light intensified as if in agreement. He slowed, stopped, and turned back the way he'd come. The Vortigern slowed too, as if confused at this sudden role reversal.

The two adversaries stared each other down. Jake tried to even his breathing, flipping Ddraenwyn from his right hand to his left. He could feel his training flooding back into him along with the adrenaline, remembered all the months his grandfather had spent drilling him endlessly on maneuvers, techniques, combat strategy. He recalled the countless hours studying the characteristics of specific monsters, their habits, strengths and weaknesses, so far as they could be catalogued at all. Days spent training in his grandfather's dingy backyard when he would have rather been hanging with his friends at the convenience store, or practicing for tryouts, for which he hardly ever had the time. Days when he would have rather been exploring a healthy relationship with a cute peer of the opposite sex, rather than deepening his knowledge of the dark shadows lurking behind the curtain of the mortal world, which he usually wished would stay hidden.

Mostly, though, he just felt rage.

The Vortigern was moving again, but it was as if everything had gone into slow motion, everything except Jake and the pinprick of light in his left hand. Somehow he had gotten closer to the beast, almost close enough to count each scale as they glistened with some unholy substance. A claw the length of his forearm stabbed harmlessly into the air where his head would have been if some reflex hadn't twisted him under, around, and now he was leaping... Into the air, towards some destination of which he was only peripherally aware... Only Ddraenwyn knew where it was taking him... He felt the blade sink into something viscous, then strike something hard... A fine mist struck his face and then he was falling... Falling...

Jake hit the ground with the tattered remains of one of the Vortigern's eyeballs wrapped loosely around his wrist like a surrender flag covered in phlegm.

"Ohhh gha-a-a-ad..." Jake could hear himself moaning. Ddraenwyn's light had gone out; did that mean the danger was over? He remembered something from one of his lessons about the Vortigern, how it had one weak spot that was easily exploited if you knew where to find it- or had a weapon that did. Some stupid rhyme. He said it out loud, to distract himself from the aftershock:

_The Vortigern likens a mighty fort  
Who makes for rather simple sport  
Many windows, but just one hearth  
Extinguished with a single fart._

He may have been a legendary dragon slayer in his day, but Jake's grandfather was definitely no bard.

Jake rose to his feet, self-checking for damage. The Vortigern lay a few yards off, its voice silenced forever. Its mane still crackled with poisonous energy, but that was fast fading, and soon the only evidence of its existence would be the torn-up track field and possibly a few hysterical stories from Andrea when she woke up. Speaking of whom...

Hr put Ddraenwyn back in its sheath and turned wearily towards the patch of grass under the wrecked bleachers. It was empty; she'd fled the scene during all the commotion. Unsurprised but a little disheartened, Jake made his way unsteadily off the field towards home. He'd been hoping that she might have stuck around to watch his heroics, but if she told anyone about what had happened, he doubted he would even be mentioned. His grandfather had yanked him out of school so many times, even his teachers forgot he was in their classes, always hesitating when saying his name during role call. The few friends he did have were used to making plans without him, and it was rare that he was ever invited to anything since his answer was usually "Sorry, I have, uh, a family thing." Andrea might have been different, if he'd had a chance with her at all... But no.

"A Templar wants for no outside friend or ally," his grandfather always told him before dragging him to yet another meeting or convention or clandestine operation-in-progress, "for his path is always inward-seeking, and he is always among his kind."

The words echoed through the night as Jake walked into it, feeling the empty space inside him expanding and contracting like a second heart. An anti-heart. He felt for Ddraenwyn, hoped to feel that strength flow into him the way it did in battle, but it remained a dark, cold piece of metal. He began thinking of how he might explain things to Andrea tomorrow, or if he should just keep quiet the way he usually did...

Behind him, the Vortigern's corpse blackened, dissolved into ash, and blew away with the wind.


	3. The Bearer

**THE BEARER**

He came in just as the movie began, the opening chords thundering in his ears as he staggered towards the back row of seats. There was only a young Korean couple sitting there, and he almost fell on top of them as he squeezed past, the girl exhaling sharply and grasping for her partner's hand. He ignored their stares as he made his way to the end of the row, four seats away, and fell limblessly into it.

He was just lucky to have somehow made it to an unpopular showing, as there were few others in the theater and most of them were occupied with the images flickering onscreen. The movie started off slowly, despite the loud music; a couple of guys on a rooftop, an excited conversation taking place. No subtitles, but he understood every word. To his left, the girl whispered something to her boyfriend, like "I think that guy spilled some Coke on me!"

What would she say, he wondered, if she found out it wasn't Coke, but his own blood? He tried to move in time with his breathing, to manage the pain moving through his body like a shoal of slow, razor-like fish. Above him, made of light, a man took a bullet in the gut and tumbled to the ground in slow motion. He heard voices as if underwater.

"Look at him. A foreigner."

"Maybe we should call security?"

He twisted away from the whispers and curled himself around the wound as if it were a child in need of comfort. But there was no comfort here. He wished he could unlearn the language coming from the young couple and from the speakers, a language he had acquired for the sole purpose of this mission. He wished he could revert to a state of ignorance, erase everything he'd learned. He wished he had never come to Seoul.

Against his better judgment, he stole a glance over his shoulder at the young couple. The girl stared back at him, eyes wide and dark. Could she be the one? Was he meant to pass his burden on to her?

Fuck it, he thought, it's not like I have a choice. He was going to die here, in darkness, surrounded by strangers with alien faces. Once you recognize the inevitable, taking action is easy. He began the labourious process of undoing the mental link binding him to the Torq, every second of effort like being stabbed anew.

When he was finished, he stared blankly at the screen, uncomprehending. Emptied of all thought, energy or desire. Waiting for the end of the movie.

_He dreamed he was walking through a forest, where the sunlight shone through the branches and leaves and made intricate patterns on the ground. The Torq was cool against his skin in the warm air. He walked and walked, and felt no pain. _

_Soon he came across a long clearing like a great hall, the trees forming cathedral-like arches overhead. He saw stone figures lining the clearing on either side of him as he passed. All men and women, expertly crafted; but where their faces should have been, there was only a smooth oval expanse. He kept moving._

_At the end of the clearing was an ancient man in white robes, clearly alive amongst the stonework. He knew he was coming upon the creator of the statues even before he heard the sounds of the chisel and hammer, as they fell again and again upon another piece that looked to be nearing completion. Here, too, the face had been left blank._

_The old man looked around, sensing the presence of a newcomer. "Welcome to the Grove of Bearers," he said. "I see you have brought the Torq."_

"_Yes. I was never told of its purpose, only that I would know when the time came for me to pass it on."_

"_That time is now. It is the key that will be used to lock the door behind you, once you have departed this mortal house."_

"_What's going to happen to me? Where am I going?"_

_The sculptor gestured around at the statues surrounding them. "You will join your predecessors, here in the Grove," he replied. "As soon as you relinquish the Torq to me, your body will become as stone, and your spirit will be added to the power of the Torq. Thus, its energies are continually renewed for the Bearers to come." _

_If he had been expecting death to be anything, it was not this. He could feel a cold lump of terror rising in him as he imagined spending the rest of eternity trapped in that clearing, the silent, faceless pawns of fate his only companions. _

_"The statues in the Grove. Why are none of them finished?"_

_"They are finished," the sculptor said, stepping back to regard his progress. "You will see when your duty is complete."_

_The hammer and chisel started up again. The sculptor continued talking with his back turned. "As for my work, I merely form the stone in the memory of your mortal likeness. It seemed the appropriate thing to do, and I was the only one qualified at the time..."_

_The Bearer watched the sculptor work, and trembled though the sun lay on his neck and shoulders like a heavy golden mantle. Where the Torq touched his flesh, there was no warmth. He said, "None of the Dragon told me about this place. I never signed up for it. I just want everything to end."_

"_Is there end to a circle?" The sculptor raised his eyes, the colour of milky jade, to the man standing before him. "As for your Dragon, I recognize no authority but that of the Torq. My assignment here was appointed by men who long ago become residents of the Grove themselves, but they did not call themselves by the name you spoke of."_

_The Bearer shut his eyes. He touched his side, found it woundless, and let his hand fall back. Fear and loneliness flooded him; sot grass yielded as he dropped to his knees. _

_"It's not fair. They knew this would happen. It was _my _fucking goddamn life-" He choked on the words. _

"_-and they stole it. Don't I get a choice? Where's my say?"_

_The sculptor was still hammering away, his voice indifferent. "You are the current Bearer. The Bearer chooses the next. Is that not what you came here to do?"_

_The Bearer thought about the girl, the look she'd given him, a little afraid, mostly just annoyed. Her pale skin. Her soft voice in the dark theater._

_"What happens if I refuse to make a decision at all?"_

_The sculptor regarded him with the same intensity he'd given the stone he was working on. "You have already chosen, or you wouldn't be here."_

_He barely heard the sculptor's answer. He'd known it wouldn't have mattered. It had been so easy, he'd thought, to accept death on his own terms; but now he realized the truth, that his entire existence had been nothing more than a bit role in the unfathomably long history of the Torq, where nobody got top billing. Everything he'd said or done, every action he'd taken, had been calculated by some higher agenda to bring him in line with the Dragon and the mission they'd given him: A fool's errand, conceived solely for him to pass the torch on to the next one in line. The Torq wanted to get somewhere, and it wanted to get there fast. It needed human lives to move, so it took them. Each one a stepping stone, disposable, forgotten... _

_He heard the sculptor put down his tools and come around the side of the stone towards him. He was still on his hands and knees, fingers digging into the soil, head bowed. He shook with sobs or laughter, even he couldn't tell._

_"I don't want to die. I don't want to die..." He could hear himself repeating it wildly, and he fought to shove it down, using the last scraps of his training to force himself to breathe evenly. He felt the old man's hands on his shoulders, gripping him with a strength that did not match their worn, spidery appearance. He wished he had a philosophy for this moment, some final aphorism of the sort his mentor had had an irritating fondness for reciting, but there was nothing. Nothing but the sculptor's hands, and the Torq radiating cold around his neck, and the hope that whatever happened to the girl, she would forgive him for this, his curse, his cowardice..._

_Gently, almost tenderly, the sculptor's fingers moved to the front of his collar. He could feel them questing there, almost as if he were a young boy again, having his tie done up neatly by his mother so they could go to church on Sundays. The irony throbbed deep in his chest. He could feel the ends of the Torq part and give way, the ring of frost leaving his flesh at last. He saw the sculptor stand up with the Torq, now open-ended, and a maelstrom of light and sound engulfed his senses._

_The last thing he saw was a crowd of people, all turning towards him, smiling and applauding, and then the credits rolled._

"Seo Kim, we're gonna be late. Just come on!"

"But, I-"

"He probably just fell asleep. Anyway, he might be a crazy homeless guy. Don't touch him, for God's sake!"

She pulled her arm from Jin's grasp. "If he's asleep, we should wake him up. If he doesn't wake up, then we've got to tell someone," she said stubbornly.

The lights were up in the theater and everyone was headed towards the exits. Soon the cleaning people would be coming in. She didn't know why this felt like such a big deal, but part of it was intentionally upsetting Jin, who could be just so pushy sometimes. He threw up his hands when he saw she wasn't going to move.

"Fine, be that way. I'll be in the lobby." He walked off, sulking.

Seo turned back to the foreigner, slumped in his seat as if someone had tossed him there. He was big, stocky compared to the people she saw in the streets every day, thick brown hair curling out from under the baseball cap pulled low over his face. His leather jacket was bunched around his shoulders, and his jeans were worn through at the knees. His hands, lying open in his lap, were stained dark in the low light.

She reached out a hand, not knowing what she would do with it once it reached him, when something lying on the floor caught her eye. She picked it up and hefted it. It was a ring of twisted metal, crude but for the intricacy of the two ends open at the front, which resembled the heads of half-reptilian, half-tiger creatures. Too big to be an armlet, she reasoned, so it must be a necklace of some kind. It was lighter and colder than it looked.

As Seo stood examining the object among the stale popcorn and candy wrappers, an image came into her mind… Fleeting, more of a feeling really… She had the impression of the colour green… Someone was calling out to her, warning her, and strangest of all, begging her for forgiveness... Then it faded, and she was left with the necklace in one hand and the cleaning crew glaring at her impatiently from the exit.

"Sorry, so sorry," she said hastily, bowing her head. She slipped the necklace into her handbag as she headed towards the lobby, questions of its ownership dissolving from her mind. She felt bad for leaving the foreign man behind, but Jin was waiting for her; and besides, the cleaning crew could deal with him now. She did hope that when the man woke up, there was a place he could go to and call home, with a group of people he might call family. She hoped that if he had not yet found these things, that he was not far from them. Really, she thought, everyone should just be as happy as I am now…

_Somewhere, deep within, a hammer and chisel pounded out a steady beat against stone. Sunlight shone through trees. A statue sighed, and then all was still._


	4. The Gift

**THE GIFT**

She did not know anything about the man in the cell next to hers, except that his name was Sam and that he was one of the Illuminati. She knew this because he had told her, repeatedly, in his desperation to find a co-conspirator; yet the longer he tried to win her over, the more she grew convinced that he was either unaware of or no longer cared about her faction alliance.

He also seemed oblivious to the fact that she was already resigned to her fate, and would not have helped him even if she had thought there was a possibility of either of them escaping the Templars' clutches.

"You know, I've been talking a blue streak for almost half an hour now, and you haven't given me one word back. You dead in there or what? Have I been yapping to a corpse this whole time?" She felt him kicking the metal grate separating their cells, each unit so cramped that the impact reverberated along her sides. He started laughing wildly, and she heard footsteps coming down the corridor.

"Uh-oh, here comes the Red Cross Society. You can't see it, girl, but there's a peephole in my cell, and they're just goose-stepping their way down this hall. It's like that scene in the Lion King with all the hyenas. Queen and motherfucking Country!"

He screamed this last part as they opened his cell and dragged him out. There were more sharp blows to the wall and a lot of grunting and scuffling, and then they were gone. Probably down to Chamber 46, where most of her nightmares now took place. She shuddered and buried her head in her arms.

A few hours, or days, later, they returned Sam to his cell. She heard something hit the floor with a muffled thud, then the clatter of the metal door as it slid shut. She crept up to the dividing grate and tried to peer through the tiny holes, but saw nothing. She lay back down on her side and slept.

Eventually, it became a routine. Sam would keep up his incessant litany of methods for engineering their freedom, until the rising hysteria of his voice summoned the guards to take him away. The only moments of peace and quiet she had were in his absence, and right after he'd been tossed back in, presumably still unconscious and therefore blessedly silent. It was only a matter of time, however, before he woke up and started the whole thing over, his voice thick with pain, but otherwise undiminished.

"They're trying to break me, but we New Yorkers don't break too easy, especially when it's a bunch of limp-wristed scone-nibblers doing the breaking," he would confide to her. "If they ever get you on that table, girl, don't mind all the blood. It's probably mine. ...Shit, why don't you ever say nothing to me? Maybe I'm just imagining someone's in there, screaming in their sleep..."

During these intervals, she meditated, bending herself around the idea of her own oblivion. Her goal, what she'd been trained since childhood to do, was to empty her mortal vessel completely before the enemy could destroy it. Every day was another knot undone in the ties that bound her soul to flesh, and once she was successful, the Templar guards would open the door of her cell and find nothing but a hollow shell. Even now, when they tortured her, she felt herself getting farther away from the pain, and by the end of the month (by her estimation) she would be free of it.

These mental preparations were always delayed by Sam's noisy returns to consciousness, which became less and less frequent as the term of their imprisonment stretched on.

Time passed, and at some point Sam broke the pattern by not waking up at all. She tapped the dividing grate, but got no response. She could see the dark shape of his body through the perforations in the grate, but it was motionless. The guards had dropped him there hours ago.

There was a small gap where the grate did not quite meet the floor. It was too cramped to properly look under it, but she could just about slide her hand through if she pressed all five fingers to the ground. She did so, straining at an awkward angle to reach him, for what purpose she did not know. Only her training prevented her from crying out when she felt his rough hand scrabble blindly over hers. His voice crackled in her ears like a radio veering in and out of range as it searched for a station.

"I... brought you... a present." He was slipping something under her palm, still caught under the grate. "It... took me... months... to make it."

She pulled back her hand, scraping the skin in her haste. With it came Sam's gift: A small triangle of metal, about the size of a potato chip, sharpened along the sides. It looked as if it had been made out of the lid of a soup can.

She could feel, rather than see, his bloody grin as she examined it.

"Courtesy of Sam Fontell, arms dealer extraordinaire. Be careful, you could put someone's eye out with that thing. Actually, I strongly encourage you do put someone's eye out... Before they put yours out first."

Though she had never seen him in person, the terrible image of Sam with two gaping sockets in his face floated into her mind.

"Well? Aren't you gonna say thanks, at least? Listen..." He coughed, and she heard the light patter of something wet hitting the floor. "I never even gave my wife a present that nice, okay? I don't know what you look like, and now I never will, but you're the most beautiful creature in the world to me right now. You're fucking gorgeous, the way I'm imagining you, blonde hair down to your ass, blue-green eyes, the works. If you're gonna say anything, don't say it now. Don't break this spell. You're my bird of Paradise, and I'm gonna get you out of this cage..."

She held up the rusted bit of metal he'd given her. Her reflection was a dull blob of colour, but it was enough for her to recall memories of a slim Asian woman in her mid-twenties, dark hair outgrown past her shoulders. Brown, sullen eyes. A round nose. Pale arms with scars like the bark of birch trees.

After over half a year of eradicating this image from her being, before its inevitable destruction at the hands of her captors, the shock of recognition took her breath away.

"Did you say something, honey?" The radio was fading, the words becoming white noise. "Don't let me down, now, girl. You get the fuck out of here. I heard them say what they were gonna do to you next... I know you're from Dragon, knew it from the start... Lizard lady, show your claws, or they gonna gut you like a fish... Goddamn... Why don't you SAY something?"

He was weeping softly. She touched a finger to one point of the triangle, drew blood. The sight of her own lifeforce flowing out of her body, the raw physicality of it, caused something to bloom within her like a crimson flower. She felt it rise up, calling her name, which she'd forgotten in the intensity of her training.

"Jane Dai."

"...What?"

"My name. Jane Dai."

"Ohhh..." He drew it out, as if it was not a word, merely the last breath of a dying wind. "Jane. Dai. That's... a nice name. You... take care of it. Remember... Who gave you... your ticket out. Me... Sam Fontell... Arms dealer extraordina-"

He died before he could finish the sentence.

Jane crouched in her cell, listening to the pulse and pound of her own heart. Footsteps criss-crossed the walkways above, headed towards the lower blocks. It was as if they had sensed his death, the carrion crows who had pecked out his eyes and were coming back for the rest of him. They were close, but the abyss was closer... She felt herself teetering on the edge, half of her resisting, the other half yearning to throw herself in. She wished she had told Sam the truth, that she had been ready for this moment, that she was not afraid to go where he had gone. Maybe then, she could have saved him.

The footsteps were louder now, about twenty feet away. Soon they would be here. She held Sam's gift down by her side, closed her eyes, and waited...


End file.
